Friday, March 06, 2009

You know, I respect "cultural differences" as much as the next kid...

...but the jumped-up goatherds with their crude-oil-funded Ralph Lauren camel blankets manage to get on my last nerve with appalling regularity. You can put bones through your nose, paint yourself with woad and run nekkid through the woods, or name your children "Tiffani" and "Chip" to your heart's content, but when you start making people legal second-class citizens or even chattel, well, I've got issues with that.

It's amazing what kind of human rights violations a nation can get away with and stay buddy-buddy with the US, as long as it's floating on enough dinosaur juice.

*Sigh*. Remember the good old days when you could just park HMS Thunderer in the nearest harbor, like Zanzibar, Veracruz, or Brest, shell a couple of their huts, and the wogs would fall into line?

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm calling CAIR! :-)

Shootin' Buddy

GreatBlueWhale said...

How insensitive! How atavistic!

How true... Sadly, looking out for "national interests" has devolved into, "Do they like us? Why don't they like us? Like, we're nice people..."

Jon said...

...There was one thing the British knew how to do once apon a time, and that was keeping idiginous people that hated eachother and the Brits in line...

This is why Energy independance is important. However you get there, be it local drilling or *WORKABLE* energy solutions. Because once you have that, you can tell those backward savages just what you think about them.

And back it up with large caliber guns.

J.R.Shirley said...

"Stone age savages" is how the residents of Afghanistan were describe to me before I went there. After I got there, I thought perhaps that was too kind...

Don said...

"The woman tried to escape when she saw a police car and in the process hit another car, which was slightly damaged," Maj. Abdul Mushin Al-Mayman, a police spokesman, told Arab News before adding, "Ha! Women drivers, amirite?"

the pawnbroker said...

wonder what the penalty is?

a good clue is at the bottom of the page..."more than 125 women signed a petion"? so what, 126? hardly a million-woman march, what could they possibly be afraid of?

as far as us parking our big canoes in the gulf to enforce human rights from our vendors...yeah, that'll go over big in the liveandletlive land of the o...

wv: bedis...yeah, bed is where i'd like to stay for oh, the next four years or so...

tc

Anonymous said...

Respecting cultural differences isn't the same thing as respecting a culture.

I'm way too egalitarian to have any respect for any culture which does not come up to my standards for fair play for everybody.

I read about this sort of unfair abuse of anybody, anywhere, and I commonly renew my enrolment in Creative Pejoratives 101.

But we've created a world where without oil we die. Literally, not figuratively. Oil is far more important than gold, but the cynic's Golden Rule does apply.

Artcowfulo

Anonymous said...

Oil, shmoil. What did Thunderer run on? Rockefeller couldn't sell all the oil in Ohio.

"I went up the Euphrates with one hundred Devon Territorials" you know the quote. The corn and oil of Mesopotamia were not bound for Kansas City. Civilisation was just as threatened when it was in thrall to the taffs for its coal.

Dan said...

Oh, I think we are missing the point. Someone, somewhere has said let us use the rest of the world's supply... of pretty much everything... and then we can get around to ours. Just take a look at where national parks overlay national mineral deposits and oil/gas reserves.

As for respecting other cultures... mine ends when they don't respect my culture. ;) Yeah, I know... I am exactly that hard to get along with.

Anonymous said...

There are many ways to get along with the locals. One is to show them that an artillery shell will land in their HQ hut whenever they bother us (see Soviet Union vs Chechnya). Another is to give them shiny beads and mirrors and iron axes for land rights (see United States, History of relations with natives). Another is to buy off one local power to suppress all the others (see Great Britain, History of the Empire for examples). Another is to kill them if they won't accept your rule (see Soviet Union vs. Ukrainian kulaks). Another is to let them sell you the natural resources for a profit (see Adam Smith).

Choose one or more and go at it, you too can be an imperial force in the world by any of these methods. I am sure there are more ways that I have not listed.

Me, I rule my cul-de-sac with a firm but benevolent hand. All who see me, bow down and tremble in fear at my lawn mowing and sidewalk trimming skills! Those who live further down the street, pray and hope I never release the backyard dogs of war, or teach my 15 year old daughter to drive!

Anonymous said...

Meh, what can you expect from a civilization only a few decades removed from living a nomadic lifestyle in the desert that discovered the 'Golden Rule'...

Gmac

Anonymous said...

An Irish paper last week ran what I take to be a Modest Proposal, showing how many jobs would return if only women would stay home.

If a person was subtle and nuanced, I'm pretty sure you could write a paper on how much longer resources would last if, for instance, women did not drive. It took a lot of society-page articles and pink special-edition Plymouths to get the city folk of 55 years ago to cozy up to the notion (although the pedestal had long since teetered out in the real world--ma grandmere put a Dodge Bros. into Ward's Canal in 1919). It's one of those things you might not notice if you weren't a woman. Of a certain age, or educational orientation.

Females now clenching the fist of sisterhood will quickly admit that, were the same proposal floated light-heartedly (say, by a former media consultant of the silky-pony campaign) about men, they'd quickly have a giggle-fit and run off lists of why it wouldn't be such a bad idea, considering How Men Are and all.

So: once monarchical control of The Motor is in place, machts nichts whether the 'driving' religious principle is Islamic orthodoxy, the Road Engine Laws, or Global Warmism, some of us are going to turn over the keys. I've said for 30 years that the UN's goal is control of all ignition: fire, gunpowder, fuel and transport. It's the Sin of Prometheus, no matter the faith. We're all grounded now.

WV tomati, what the Romans would have called love apples, had they any.

John A said...

About a year ago there was an article about the new pilot of multi-engine jet planes for one of SA's princes.

A woman, who has to be driven to and from the airport.

Anonymous said...

Hehe, Tam said Brest.

Anonymous said...

"It's Tommy this and Tommy that, and Tommy go away"! Eventually, Thomas Atkins did go away and so did Great Britain! We're next!

Anonymous said...

CAR, she pronounces it "Bray."

Anon 5:37, there's any number of fairly reasonable folk, right on here, who'd just as soon the trooper was no longer on the tide. And I have unending faith in the ability of Our Boys, no matter what craven shithole we send them into, to marry the local girls and bring them home to brood and chew at the root of the world-ash.

WV bangshar: First Battle Of, where the twain met.

Anonymous said...

Someone should have a sit down with the various oil ticks, especially the House of Sod, and explain that while, yes, we do need their oil, we don't particularly need them and they should comport themselves appropriately if they'd like to continue being on this side of the sand.

Dr. Coyote said...

Come to think of it, the lone female in my household is barred from driving. OTOH, she *is* an art history major, and she *did* voluntarily move to New Orleans to pursue said vocation, which speaks volumes of her technical skills and judgement. And the last time I attempted to enlighten her unto the customs of the roadway, the conversation went roughly:
"What *is* that smell, Dad?"
"Ah, that would be the clutch on my BMW, Dearest Daughter. Say, it's getting late, how 'bout I get us home now?"

Strings said...

I seem to recall a story about one of our lady soldiers "caught driving" in the Land of Sod...

One of the local bully-boys came out with his switch, to chastise the errant girl. And promptly had his chin propped by the muzzle of an M9.

And we won't discuss the shortest stay in Sod ever recorded (at least, not here)...

WV: "uncest". What they should practice more of in Kentucky?

Anonymous said...

yay Strings, boo Rob. Going on about How Girls Are isn't going to help a thing. Even her driving.

Go on about how Art History majors are.

Anonymous said...

Just look at it this way. Practically we are consuming oil at a fast pace. Something on the order of about 60 million barrels a day (depending on which stats you use).

I give the Saudi's maybe another 30 years until the main oil runs out. and those last 10 will be painful becasue the money will stop quickly.

Yes they will produce some oil for hundreds of years, just like the US, but they will not be in the drivers seat like before.

Now think about the generation that is born today. By the time they are near my age (late middle age) they will be facing going back to camel herding and selling sand to other arabs. Yes they are high on the hog now and for the next few decades but when the oil runs out, what do they have?

Sand, sand and hot sand. Not much else.

Anonymous said...

To give the Saud family its due, its efforts to come up with 'sustainable' stuff for its subjects to do has not been half-hearted, just, well, monarchical. They also made a lot of what, until recently, looked like very sound foreign investments. There. I'm almost done saying good shit.

The US did not establish the "stong man" form of government there--not in that country, anyway. The Royal Navy needed a secure source of oil, and the Foreign Office aimed its many compromises in that direction. The US has, for the whole period of ME oil production, been open-handed in paying for resources--something the colonial powers never did--and also in developing local talent, and bringing subjects to American universities to study nuclear engineering. I don't get that part.

The US was mamby-pamby only in the assumption that a higher standard of living, and better education for those designated as talented, would naturally lead to a modern point of view and a movement to rights-oriented government (I don't use the magic word "democracy" because it is about devoid of meaning by now, and does not entail bills of rights). It's not automatic, and we should learn form that in our domestic dealings, if it isn't too late. Iran is another story, a sad one, but given the outside factors even before the Brotherhood-- trying to free-trade on a corporate scale in a political atmosphere corrupted both by Old Europe and local tradition, and the world communist movement see "democracy" above--the US certainly dealt as fairly as any player, and better than most.

There was nothing wrong with dealing for energy resources on the world stage. Our impact was more good than bad, and probably still is. Huge risks for huge profits yield not only great accomplishments, but also new kinds of sin--as we will see when we leave the world, and concentrate our energy conflicts on these shores.

WV "hydro," smartass.